Review: Forumotion and us

as we had a new theme design a new life after a long period on inactivity, we decided to ask for a full review to the Forumotion review section and this is the result

FM Codes

When I first entered your forum I had to do a slight double take to make sure I was actually on a Forumotion forum. Which is a good thing because that means if I was scoring you completely on originality that I’d be given you 10/10. I was very impressed with the design and layout (I’ll go into more detail later in the review) as well as how easy it was to navigate your site. The welcome message I go was a nice touch and but one thing I did notice was that the text was rather small, it could just be me but I thought the description text was rather small, not difficult to read but smaller than average for what you’d see on a forum. Overall I was very pleased with my first impression of your site and this is why you’ve received the rating of excellent.

I think you’ve done a great job with your graphics. Let’s start with your banner shall we. Well you don’t exactly have a banner do you? You more or less have a logo what says ‘FM Codes, Powered by Forumotion’ which is perfectly fine. I really liked the logo design and it was small and neat like a logo should be. I’m really glad you don’t have one of those massive banners that some people like to have the are big and bulky and overall ugly, but you don’t have one of those, you have a nice logo that states the name of your forum and therefore it serves its job. The navigation bar on your forum was an excellent touch I like how you’ve created a side navigation bar, you don’t see FM forums with this too often so this was a really nice touch and I was very impressed with the overall design of your navigation bar. Personally I think to improve the navigation bar would be to have it follow you while you scroll down the page, this saves having to scroll up again to click a navigation bar. I’m not saying that as a negative but I think it would be a good idea to have it follow you down the page as I think that would make navigating more easy. However I’m not going to mark you down as this was just a suggestion. Overall I’d say your navigation bar deserves another excellent because of its fantastic design, unique positioning and how useful it is.Let’s turn our attention to the icons on your forum. Personally I think your icons are superb, they are perfectly sized, well placed and fit the forum that they’re attached too. The ones in the navigation bar are also great. I also like the little badges that say ‘new’ etc. However, you do see those buttons a lot on many forums so maybe it isn’t the most original item to have on your forum. Now if we turn our attention to the layout of your forum. Your forum is well organised. I can’t make any suggestions to your layout as I’d personally would have went with the same layout as your forum has as it is organised and well-constructed.I believe I have covered most of your graphics and your layout. Normally I’d make a comment about the theme but to be honest your theme is great and I’ve mentioned all the graphics your theme uses so therefore I don’t have any more to say really. I guess if I was to sum up your graphics and layout in one word that word would be. Awesome

At a glance your forum appears to be fairly active as every forum has been posted in recently for the exception of one forum which hasn’t been touched since July 2013 but given the nature of that forum it is understandable that said forum could be inactive. Do you know how I said at a ‘glance’ your forum appears to be active well when I did the member to post ratio 6274/656 = *ahem* roughly 9 posts per member which is pretty bad, that tells me you have many members signing up and not posting which therefore makes me think you should encourage members to get involved within your forum. When I look at your members overall top posters I see most of them haven’t logged in since last year and some even back in 2012 which tells me that the forum has laid pretty dormant and that you’re trying to bring activity up. Furthermore it seems most of the posts on your forum have been done by the people who haven’t logged in since 2012/2013 so again this shows that right now your forum isn’t too active. Personally my overall suggestion would be to get your community involved with your forum more because right now your forum isn’t doing too well in the activity department. Perhaps hold some posting contests or offer something to the people who post a lot like exclusive tutorials or a section where they can talk that’s off the general forum. Do something to make members want to stay apart of your forum because right now the forum doesn’t look too active and the members connected in the last 24 hours only confirms this and this is why I’ve given the rating below because your forum activity is quite poor given the high post to member ratio.

Since I couldn’t actually see your staff or usergroups I couldn’t really provide a review for this section so I won’t actually give you a rating since I couldn’t provide this part of the review for you.

N/A

Your forum is very original and there are certain aspects that you don’t see too often on forums. First of all the navigation bar is really original as you don’t see many forums that have a vertical navigation bar. Second of all the general layout of your forum is quite original as you don’t see many forums with a welcome table at the top. I’d also like to say the design is very original as well. You don’t see too many forums that have the kind of design you have on your forum with individual forum icons. Overall I’d say your forum is very original and that you’ve taken steps to maintain your forums originality by making the design quite unique and make specific aspects of your forum unique and thus you’ve been given the rating of excellent.

Let's have a big Applause for Mathias, as without him anything of what is on Fmcodes as design and tools would be here

Now the only part, as you have read, that we have to increase is the forum activity and we need your help for this Soon we are going to open again the FmShop and of course, the members who have invited their friends on this forum will have some important advantages and maybe something free (things like psd files, html themes, etc.)